Mods and cheat engine

[Grebeny]

Let's be real, Sony is just looking to axe anime/Japanese games from it's platform since they moved HQ. It would be better for the game in the long run if they just shook off the baggage that is Sony, imo.

The only game that in anyway proves your point is the censorship in DMC. But capcom confirmed they decided to add this censorship on their own, they were never asked to do so by Sony in any way. Every other example, sorry, I saw the things and it is disgusting other platforms allow it.

[Kuroka]

All this back and forth... its black or white, we ban all or nothing and im rather in for all... ppl cant be trusted and you cant have nice things, but cheaters will always fight against it... just as some defend bots as they "let me buy cheap stuff!!!111" *sigh*

[Cyanamists]

- Even partially using mods as Xeno and other world popular streamers are getting affected by it beause their popularity stands on them being good at the game, but when half Limsa have Ultimates cleared (no matter if they used mods or not, because you can't proof they did used or did not used) they become nothing, everyone can do what they do. So they kind of shooting themselves in the knee, you can't be the noticeably good player when everyone have no troubles to "play" at your level.

Alright skip over the other terrible takes for now, this one is extremely funny. No one, absolutely no one at the high end raiding scene wants anyone to not clear the fights just so they can "stand out". If anything, they're more than willing to, at the very least, hype up fights and encounters so more people would be interested in them, some might even go in and help teams prog if theyre kind/have the time to do so. If your statement is true, then why does xeno/Arthars go back into pf/help teams clear the fight? They should be saying "NO I got my clear and YOU SHOULDNT" It makes absolutely 0 sense. Also you haven't been around any Aether limsa aetherytes have you? There's plenty of ultimate weapons hanging out and I'm pretty sure Xeno isn't offline thinking, "Damn all these guys are at my level, I can't be considered good anymore."

Plus the other takes
- Delete all mods reeee!!! Oh except for these few, I like them so keep them.
- If you're going to say you're okay with SE getting rid of 300k users who mod for qol reasons, who's gonna pay for the missing subscriptions? You? Because the company would definitely be very interested because their bottom line is being impacted.
- Bard player vs manual... I personally do not care about this one, I think it's a pretty silly argument.

[Saraide]

There are many streamers that are popular because they know how to entertain the audience like Josh Strife, Asmongold or Zepla. But other streamers like Xeno and Arthars build reputation by being good at the game. This is the reason Arthars stream had 15k+ viewers when he was on world first ultimate and 6k when another group cleared the ultiamte. Xeno was not part of world first community and his stream was a lot smaller, even if he was one of the best warriors in FF way before the specific events made him popular.

Both Arthars and Xeno reacted super defensive when they heard people are banned for using mods, but after they saw more information about it, they moved backward from their first statements. They are not stupid and realize if people use mods to cheat world first offstream, their own streams are going to be hurt directly, I mean, numbers show it 18k one hour before world first on last ultimate is quite higher number from 8k twenty minutes after and 6k one hour later.

Their reputation of being good at the game is not harmed by other people cheating, it can only be harmed by themselves cheating. If you think neverland only got their world first through cheating and not through their own skill you are hard coping. Obviously once the special event is over, special event viewership will drop.

[ForteNightshade]

Bagel got banned for using telegraphs for boss attacks that were not suppose to be there. Way before Xeno cleared, Bagel group was world first in prog and all others were watching mechanics from his stream. So some of the tools already work on day one. The streamer from japan and the World first youtuber had addon showing them when they can start moving during cast and addon to see numbers they are not suppose in party list.

No, he wasn't. There weren't even telegraphed programs available at that point. He was banned for using a UI plugin, the very one I mentioned. You have no idea what you're talking about. The telegraphed programs are a recent thing which essentially show the mechanics for you. They aren't what Bagel and Hiiro for banned for back in May. Both were using the aforementioned plugin and one had triggers. You can debate all you fancy on if triggers are cheating but adding numbers underneath buffs isn't. That's absurd. Against the ToS? Absolutely. They shouldn't have streamed it. That's on them. It isn't cheating though.

Yoshida never said such a thing. What was written in his note is that they will look at the third party tools used by community and evaluate what they may add to discourage usage of those tools. This specific addon was not mentioned in any way by his statement, they never stated they may add those numbers to the party list or they will implement any of the mods, the streamers were banned for. For example they added new sounds on specific mechanics to discourage players from using auto call bots, did they added auto call bots when they wanted to discourage players from using them?

Yes, he did. He specifically talked about overhauling the UI and adding elements from some of the more popular plugins. Which is precisely what Bagel and Hiiro were using. He didn't name the actual plugin for obvious reasons but for those who know of or even use it, it's fairly obvious which one he was referencing.

Fast example. They implemented code to catch up on people that fake not being afk by using forward, backward macro on their keyboard when servers were overwhelming and nobody wanted to be DCed for AFK. The "dungeon bots" are almost extinct species, and if you played during HS or SB you would know what I am talking about. For crafting they need to press one button on a simple macro that maybe makes it too complicated, or we don't complain about it enough to make them take actions.

... what are you on about? They did no such thing. There were two plugins available immediately after they announced removing the AFK dodging people were doing by clicking market boards or opening their HUDs. They never touched either one of them despite both working by essentially masking key commands to trick the timer into thinking you pressed a button. The dungeon bots are less prevalent now because SE removed the gil drops. Instead, they've made their homes in map dungeons and Eureka. We've even had several threads about how Pyros is infected with bunny bots. Guess what SE has done about it? Absolutely nothing.

This mods are not allowed in first place, to be banned. In the last two days we saw around 7 really toxic communications both ingame and in discord related to ACT/FFlogs. You may not see it personally, but people get frustrated and stop playing the game because of it. For huge portion of the players, the selling point for this game was there is none or at least is reduced to an absolute minimum of this behavior. For sure SE already are losing money because people see the same bevaior they ran away from. BTW go back to first streams of Asmongold, even for him that was a one of the big selling points of FF XIV.
Just imagine if the NSFW mods generate a pedo scandal, as George Cacioppo knows pretty well, Sony have zero tollerance for it and may remove the entire FF from their platform. No money lost at all.

No, it isn't. Most players don't actually care about third party tools because it doesn't impact them whatsoever. The vast majority are coming in for the story, social aspects and whatnot. If that weren't the case, SE would have banned FFlogs and ACT a decade ago when they were first release. They never have despite the former gaining so much prominence in the raid scene it impacts the meta more than even the dev team. Don't believe me? Selfish jobs were never an actual problem in Stormblood. FFlogs made them one because bringing one meant actively hurting your ranking. Hence why White Mages everywhere were constantly asked to play Astro. That changed in Shadowbringers when they introduced rDPS/aDPS. Mods have created a scandal already with Ryne. Guess what? SE never did anything about them.

At this point in time, the estimated number of players using third party tools exceeds 300k based on just unique downloads. SE isn't attracting anywhere near enough players to replace the sheer number they would lose to offset banning them all wholesale. Hence why they never have.

[Grebeny]

No, he wasn't. There weren't even telegraphed programs available at that point.

Straight lie, here is zepla talking very specifically after he was banned and showing the telegraph mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hgr8W03Tk0

Yes, he did. He specifically talked about overhauling the UI and adding elements from some of the more popular plugins.

Again you put words he didn't said and clearly know that because "we know what he is talking about" is very different from "he said he is adding it".

... what are you on about? They did no such thing. There were two plugins available immediately after they announced removing the AFK dodging people...

Another straight lie, a friend of mine was using those to escape AFK bans, and both of them were blocked. There were other ways people found to avoid those two and it is even in one of the weekly update letters (as far as you are talking straight lies as I showed above, i will not waste time to look for this one).

No, it isn't. Most players don't actually care about third party tools because it doesn't impact them whatsoever. The vast majority are coming in for the story, social aspects and whatnot. If that weren't the case, SE would have banned FFlogs and ACT a decade ago when they were first release. They never have despite the former gaining so much prominence in the raid scene it impacts the meta more than even the dev team. Don't believe me? Selfish jobs were never an actual problem in Stormblood.

Talking very specifically about Stormblood, people were complaining so much about dragoon and samurai because they had no party buffs and nobody wanted them in their parties. So there was an issue with selfish jobs, but on the other end. And I personally don't see issue with haveing ACT and FFlogs, but how they are used. As far as the community that uses them becomes more and more agressive, there is a point where many people (as I did in the last year and half) just had enough of this crap.

At this point in time, the estimated number of players using third party tools exceeds 300k based on just unique downloads. SE isn't attracting anywhere near enough players to replace the sheer number they would lose to offset banning them all wholesale. Hence why they never have.

Sold 10 million only last year, what they don't do? Can you fact check at least one of your statements before trolling?

[Nav_Fae]

It's always funny to me how people get overly defensive when their precious ToS breaking mods are in the spotlight

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

Straight lie, here is zepla talking very specifically after he was banned and showing the telegraph mod: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hgr8W03Tk0

Zepla's video was simply showing the telegraph thingy from a different reddit post that you could clearly see from 2s of actually watching and comparing the reddit thread titles, Bagel wasn't using it. She even says right after the Bagel clip: "Here's another thing I want to show you." Which shows the two clips were unrelated. If you're going to argue he was banned for certain things, its best to get properly researched on what caused his ban.

The only thing he got banned for was the numbers under buffs add-on. My group watched Bagel all the time while we were world racing for information gathering, there wasn't any time at all before his ban, that he was using telegraph hacks. That being said, think about how ludicrous your statement would sound. It took nearly half of the first day for most streamer groups to even see the mechanic that telegraph hack is showing in that clip - without knowing how the mechanic functions, its impossible to make a telegraph hack since you have zero idea what you're supposed to be telegraphing. These hacks would have come, a week later after DSR was released at the earliest, a far cry from day/week 1.

Another straight lie, a friend of mine was using those to escape AFK bans, and both of them were blocked. There were other ways people found to avoid those two and it is even in one of the weekly update letters (as far as you are talking straight lies as I showed above, i will not waste time to look for this one).

I know of 5 different friends who used those plugins for ACT that avoided the auto-logout during EW's release and they worked flawlessly as they were still online in the same spot 13 hours later. Square has never 'trapped' any game coding; its a waste of dev time, money, and resources to do so. The most they do on a new patch is scramble the opcodes most add-ons use to communicate with certain variables in the game.

Also nice dodging; the burden of proof in this instance falls on you if you want to make a statement on official wording without sourcing. That being said, the post you're referring to is them talking about methods of circumventing the afk timer they patched out of the game; not 'trapping' the game code, which has a massive different connotation since it implies an undercover change intent on exposing something, when all they did was announce they were fixing several exploits players could use to get around the afk timer, the literal opposite of a trap which requires ignorance on the target's part to fall into it.

[Kyssa]

It is possible to make band with real playing players, nobody does it because the stage for it is already overewhelmed with "bard simulators". The tools to sync between few people are already in the game. And there is already a great mod for people that want to learn to play, btw. I don't want to write or promote mods here, but there is one that you can add songs and play them with controller as dancing game or rock band. I would be so happy if they add this kind of feature where you can compose songs and play them this way after. I know it will not work with midi files directly, but if you have all the notes, you can compose the song easily on console too and it will actually motivate players to learn to play, who knows, their bands may be quite better from what we have now if they had the chance. But nobody asks for improvements, because they already have "a way" that took over the stage.

I'm somewhat new'ish to the game- a little over a year- so this is news to me. However, as you pointed out, a mod is a mod is a mod. One shouldn't be okay, while another isn't. There is also the issue of using music that isn't original to the person playing:

In relation to any functions within the game which allow you to perform virtual musical instruments (“performance actions”), you are strictly prohibited from performing the music of any third parties.

I imagine most people do not write their own music (though some out there are likely talented enough to!).. so if you're adhering to rules- barding musically would likely have to cease to be a feature of the game because who knows if you're being recorded and your performance being uploaded unbeknownst to you?

I think as far as issues within the game worth taking a stand over- this one baffles me the most.

[Kazhar]

The telegraph mod showed by Zepla a few months ago was never used in any stream during World First. The meteor gif circulating everywhere isn't even set in DSR, this is Thordan normal / Thordan EX arena. (and nobody who ever did DSR could mistake the two)